Monday, 28 May 2018

If you thought this place was dormant, you'd be wrong. Yes it's been quiet but - as mentioned previously - there are potentially life-changing things going on at Puddlecote Inc and I'm also not long back from a week on a boat in Norfolk with an angry Scottish ex-squaddie frustrated at not having wifi to talk to his Argentinian girlfriend. Still, I'm a survivor so got back safe and sound.

In the past week, though, the global 'public health' community has been busy removing all possible doubt that it might have anything to do with the public's health. In the run-up to the World Health Organisation's World No-Tobacco day on 31st May, they have been doing their damnedest to ensure that the status quo is protected so they can continue trousering the lovely cash that smokers provide.

Firstly, as reported by Snowdon, not happy with banning its own citizens from using e-cigarettes to quit smoking, Australia is now trying to bully the World Customs Organisation (WCO) into making tobacco harm reduction unaffordable to millions of smokers worldwide.

Last May, Australia proposed that the WCO create a new category (24.04) in Chapter 24 for 'nicotine products for human consumption, not containing tobacco but containing nicotine.' The Aussie government admitted that e-cigarettes are not tobacco products but said that 'they are closely related to tobacco in that they are used as substitutes for tobacco products'(!).

The WCO Secretariat seems to be sympathetic to this proposal. It appears to wrongly believe that e-cigarettes were developed by the tobacco industry and wants to put all 'new products developed by the tobacco industry as an alternative to traditional cigarettes' in the tobacco category, including those that don't contain tobacco and even those that don't contain nicotine.

Can you think of anything more evil than this? Even the most blinkered of tobacco controllers concede that e-cigs are safer than smoking, they merely contest to what degree. Yet here is the ultimate prodnosery of Australia not content with merely preventing their own citizens from accessing vaping products, but also forcibly interfering in the affairs of other countries to make sure safer alternatives to smoking are made more difficult to buy worldwide.

Imagine the most disgusting and anti-social neighbour you have ever encountered. You know, the rotten-hearted old crone who would puncture kids' bike tyres for fun and cares not about what happens to the kid as a result? Yep, that's Australia, curtain-twitching on acid, as vile as they come.

Inevitably, the World Health Organisation is complicit.

Last week's document includes a letter from the WHO, thanking the WCO for the invitation to comment and supporting the reclassification.

Well of course they would, because the WHO long since departed from its role of protecting the public's health, it is now just a pitiful parody of the organisation that used to concern itself with preventing disease. Instead it has shut down that part of its operation in favour of attacking legitimate industry. Millions of people are threatened with disease and ill-health while the massed egos and huge salaries of the cretins behind their Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) focus on playground-level politics.

Of course, in an ideal world it would be possible to talk sense into the WHO but that presupposes that they would ever listen to it. This entirely unelected body is 100% unaccountable to all of us despite hoovering up taxes to pay for their expensive shindigs.

What's more, if you try to engage with this disgusting bunch of crooks - because that's what unaccountable cartels are called in any other sector - they simply ignore you.

Take, for example, their latest 'consultation' on non-communicable diseases (do go read here about how this is just a racket to ensure the WHO can steal your money for eternity without improving any nation's health). I put 'consultation' in quote marks because it's nothing of the sort - the WHO has decided it will only listen to organisations which it chooses to.

Just like that. No explanation except that the WHO claims that NNA "furthers the interests of the tobacco industry". Only the corrupt WHO could possibly work out how advocating products to replace lit tobacco can be described as that, but then the WHO is not really interested in health.

The NNA has asked for an explanation as to this baffling decision on the part of the WHO but - as is to be expected from an unaccountable perversion of a 'public health' organisation - they have not even had the manners or class to acknowledge the email, let alone respond.

Another included in the black ball list is the Swedish Institute of Tobacco Studies. The pedigree of its director, Lars Ramström, speaks for itself with Google Scholar listing a total of over 1600 academic citations, but I guess they disagree with the WHO's cosy little echo chamber so he has been thrown into the wilderness too.

The WHO FCTC is, as usual, cowering behind their misapplied article 5.3 and hoping no-one will notice what a repulsive gaggle of self-interested troughers they are, and how they are now having an overwhelmingly negative effect on global public health. For the record, the NNA makes it quite clear on their website how they operate.

NNA welcomes donations from individuals and organisations to support our campaigning work. We are however unable to accept such donations from manufacturers and distributors of nicotine products.

With the NNA being a registered charity and staffed by unpaid volunteers, the WHO - a multi-million dollar Goliath by comparison - is showing its complete disregard for the interests of consumers and others who they pretend to exist to protect.

It seems, instead, the WHO FCTC is using a rule it created itself (article 5.3) - which it claims is to advise governments to ignore commercial interests in creating legislation - to instead justify disallowing consumer charities and others from responding to the WHO which, as should be obvious, is not a government considering it has never received a democratic vote in favour of it from anyone in the world.

Unelected. Unaccountable. And making up its own rules of engagement as it goes along. The WHO isn't a health body, it's a fascist, crooked, tax-gobbling global menace.

250 years ago, the term "no taxation without representation" was coined yet here we are in 2018 and the WHO are steadfastly refusing to engage with anyone whose ideas disagree with theirs, despite sucking up multi-million pounds worth of our taxes. They routinely refuse to debate; prohibit free speech; and ban the press from their meetings, all of which are held behind closed doors.

The WHO is as secretive as the Mafia but with lesser morals. We have to wonder why our government sees fit to shovel our taxes to a body which makes banana republic dictators appear a model of transparency by comparison. Maybe some might wish to ask their MP why this is tolerated by Westminster, aren't we all supposed to value transparency and openness these days?

In the meantime, when you see the WHO proudly boasting about their World No-Tobacco Day on Thursday, allow yourself a wry smile knowing that the biggest supporter of traditional tobacco use in the world right now is ... the WHO.